Katuray salad

[Retro post - recently looked for these pix which were taken in summer of 2017 but am posting them Aug 2019 so I can have a post during that month, ha ha]

My parents recently gave us these interesting flower...

which were placed in a ziploc bag...


The flowers came from a few trees in their backyard. My dad said it was called "Katuray" (sometimes spelled as 'Katuday'; as the 'r' and the 'd' in Tagalog is sometimes, not all the time, interchangeable).  Looking online, this tree's scientific name is Sesbania grandiflora and is indigenous to South East Asia (which includes the Philippines). My dad likes experimenting with growing different trees, "just for fun" he says.  He definitely has a green thumb since he is also growing papaya trees and also guava and figs. My mom told me that the flowers have medicinal properties as well but didn't go into details.


So here are the twigs of a young tree...

The flowers, picked apart look like this (no stamens and stems).  They are waxy feeling.  They told me to make a "salad" with it.  I had never eaten a flower salad before but they said this was common in their region in the Philippines (Ilocos region).  The flowers are eaten as "vegetables" there.

Recipes I saw online included tomatoes (the roasted butterflied chicken not included; another food gift from my folks).

The recipe involved chopped tomatoes with red onions and a dressing of vinegar and bagoong. Yeah, pretty strong stuff. I had to blanch the flowers first then plunge in ice water.


Instead of vinegar,  I used lemon juice. I also went super light on the bagoong.

The flowers themselves don't have much of a taste, if any I would describe it as lightly vegetal. The flavor really comes from the tomatoes (which Filipinos use as a side condiment for everything) and the red onions and of course, the bagoong. If you don't know what bagoong is, is is fermented fish sauce; I myself, prefer the bagoong alamang, which is salted shrimp fry.  Go easy on it if you don't like the salty funkiness.

For some recipe links, check out:
The Tasty Island Aug 10, 2012
Mama's Guide Recipes, Aug 18, 2017
(I noticed she used lemon juice instead of vinegar)

Both recipes ended adding protein to the salad (one was shrimp, the other was fish)

This one from Steemit is also nice. All of the links have nicer photos of the flowers on the trees and during preparation. Mine looked brown compared to theirs, ha ha.

This flower is seasonal and available only in the summertime.  Glad my parents shared this with me as I had never had it before.  It was interesting to know what they grew up eating and them replicating what they could here.